Every PPM Express comparison page scores the same eighteen enterprise requirements, against the same 250-user scenario, using published vendor documentation only. This page explains how that works, what the scores mean, and what the method deliberately does not do.
Each of the eighteen requirements gets one of four outcomes for each vendor. Outcomes convert to points, points are multiplied by the requirement weight, and the total is expressed as a percentage of the maximum. Nothing is hidden behind a proprietary index.
Weights total 43 across the eighteen requirements. A vendor score is the weighted points earned divided by 43, rounded to the nearest whole number. PPM Express Enterprise Ultra scores 41 of 43, or 95.
These were written for an enterprise hybrid PMO: roughly 250 modeled users, 75 to 250 active initiatives, several delivery systems already in place, and a need for centralized portfolio, resource, financial and executive reporting. They do not change between vendors, which is what makes the scores comparable.
Map initiatives to strategy and track progress against objectives or key results.
Centralize initiatives and provide governed portfolio-level health, status, dates, risks, and decisions.
Collect requests, score them consistently, and move approved initiatives into delivery.
Model competing investment mixes using strategy, budget, capacity, timing, targets, and dependencies.
Balance demand and capacity across roles, named resources, teams, projects, and time periods.
Provide portfolio and project financial control and connect spend to expected value.
Allow teams to use native schedules or external delivery tools without losing portfolio governance.
Capture actual effort for projects and tasks and use it in reporting and resource analysis.
Create standardized executive reports with AI narratives and scheduled PDF or email delivery.
Ask portfolio questions, identify risk, generate plans, summarize health, and automate routine management work.
Roll up work from Jira, Azure DevOps, Planner, Project, Smartsheet, monday.com, and other systems into a portfolio view.
Create or update connected tasks and work items while preserving team execution in the source system.
Enable enterprise reporting, data export, integration, and repeatable process automation.
Allow PMO administrators to adapt fields, views, templates, rules, and workflows as practices mature.
Provide access controls, auditability, protected work, sandboxes, and environment options where required.
Give employees, executives, team members, and viewers access without annual cost increasing for every additional user.
Manage client delivery, billable utilization, time, costs, charges, and profitability as an integrated operating model.
Visualize initiatives, dependencies, capabilities, outcomes, and architecture relationships across the enterprise.
Why weights and not a flat average: a flat average lets a vendor offset a missing financial module with a strong whiteboard. Weighting keeps the mandatory requirements doing the work they should.
The headline score on every comparison page uses the enterprise hybrid PMO weighting. The switch on each page re-weights the same eighteen assessments for two other operating models, without changing a single verdict. If your organization looks more like one of the other two, use that number instead.
Wants everyone in the portfolio, governance across the tools teams already use, resource and financial control, and a cost that does not move when headcount does.
Buys for investment modeling first: competing scenarios, hard constraints, strategy alignment and enterprise architecture.
Runs client work. Billable utilization, time, cost and margin matter as much as the portfolio view.
Plans matter more than products. Every assessment names the plan it applies to. A capability that exists only in a higher tier does not earn a score on the plan being compared; it is described in the condition text instead. Where a vendor does not publish a price for the assessed plan, we say so and show the published tier beneath it as a floor rather than inventing a figure.
Stated plainly, because a comparison that only lists its strengths is a brochure.
We use AI to read vendor documentation and draft assessments at a scale a small team could not cover by hand. We do not use it to decide what is true. Every page is signed off by a PPM Express analyst before it is published, and we are accountable for what it says.
The framework is owned by one person. The reviewing is done by the team that has to defend it in front of customers.
Anton Kravsov
Founder, PPM Express. Owns the comparison framework, the requirement set and the weightings.
PPM Express Analysts
Review and approve every assessment, every price and every verdict before publication.
Framework last reviewed August 23, 2026.
About PPM ExpressWhere AI is not used. Prices are read from the vendor’s pricing page by hand and stamped with the date they were read. Where a vendor does not publish a price we say so rather than estimating one. No verdict is generated from another comparison site, an analyst report or a model’s prior knowledge of a product.
PPM Express produces these comparisons and sells one of the products in them. That is a conflict of interest, and the method is built to be checkable rather than to be trusted. Every verdict names its source, every page shows where PPM Express is the weaker choice, and the pricing tables include the user counts at which a competitor is cheaper than we are.
Vendors and readers are welcome to challenge any assessment. Send the requirement number, the page it appears on, and a link to the official documentation that contradicts it. Corrections that hold up are applied and the verification date is updated.
Request a correctionAssessments are re-checked when a vendor changes plan structure or pricing, and reviewed on a rolling basis otherwise. Each comparison page carries its own verification date in the header, which is the date the underlying evidence was last read rather than the date the page was edited.
See all thirteen comparisons.svg){kind=small}
